Global launch - According to Luke

Well, it was worth the wait and all the hard work. Of course it was - there's nothing like the feeling an author gets when a new book hits the stores. According to Luke is well and truly launched, today March 29, 2011.

Simultaneously in eBook and paperback, BeWrite Books has set it off, with a blog entry and a front-end feature on their store front. Wow - it looks great, and people are telling me they'd love to read it. Well over 60 people queued up for the giveaway at Goodreads in the first hour. That makes me very happy.

No - you have not missed it. Entries are accepted for about a month, and a winner is drawn at random by the Goodreads Giveaways machine.

eBook sales have taken off and my publishers tell me digital sales at BeWrite have never been so good. The eclipse is happening this year, and According to Luke will be one of the books that prove people are preferring to read on the go.

No matter whether people choose to read this new thriller on an eReader or a paperback, the content is identical - and takes the reader on an thrilling chase. Join the star-crossed lovers as they try to solve a personal dilemma and a very threatening mysterious one. And when you do read it, I would certainly like to know your opinions.

Paperback or eBook?

Image via Wikipedia

What should a writer publish a book in first - paperback or eBook? This is a dilemma faced by writers who feel confident enough about their own writing to attempt a self-publishing venture with a book or two. There cannot be many established writers, too, who are not tempted to get their out-of-print volumes out there and for sale.

For some writers, the latter venture could be their only self-publishing endeavour. Finding a publisher is not an easy thing to accomplish, and once one is found, giving that publisher the right of first refusal on all subsequent manuscripts might feel like a good idea in this climate. It certainly makes sense. Self-publishing then is reserved for those volumes an author would like to keep in print beyond their contract dates. When rights revert, the time is right.

For emerging writers, finding that first publisher is a difficult thing. Yes, we all hear amazing stories of first-time authors landing seven-figure contracts, but the reason we hear the news is because it does not often happen. Generally, there are months if not years of receiving rejection after rejection, that often have  less to do with the quality of the work than its potential to make money in a particular season, climate or market environment. Self-publishing is an option, but when I say 'self', I mean self. It makes little financial or practical sense to pay a company to 'help' you do what you can do yourself with some research and a lot of commonsense. Getting stuck is something one can get oneself out of rather easily with a search for more information.

It is very possible to self publish for next to nothing. It is certainly the case for eBooks. Paperbacks will incur the writer some costs along the way, but nothing major.

So the choice: what comes first, the eBook or its hardcopy version?

The answer is simple: start on the version you think most of your readers are likely to choose first. Is yours a YA urban fantasy? Then the chances are your market is digital-savvy and already equipped with eReaders or some sort of device on which your book with fit. Have you written a cosy mystery with a forty- or fifty-something protagonist, which will appeal to ageing baby-boomers? Then perhaps a paperback should come first. Mind you, I know some pretty digital-happy fifty-somethings, so you might have to come out with your eBook in pretty quick succession.

Think market. Think speed. If you use Kindle, your eBook can be out as soon as tomorrow, and selling happily, as mine do. If you use CreateSpace, it takes a week or so (depending on where your proof needs posting to) and you are ready to go.

Time is of the essence, especially in these days of rapid everything. Doing things yourself and making timely choices might mean your book is bought and read sooner, rather than later. Don't hold back - let me know your opinion now by filling in a comment box. I love to hear what readers and writers feel.

Food and fiction

Image via Wikipedia

Reality TV has given us an escape route from drudgery: cooking programs that seem to restore our faith in our ability to conjure up amazing meals. It is really all "if only" TV. It's wishful thinking TV, in the same way that lifestyle and home decor programs and magazines are wishful thinking productions.

Fiction has some of the same elements that make us, as readers, conjure up in our minds situations that seem a bit more palatable or enjoyable than ours. We read romance, adventure, drama, and nostalgia and sigh ... "If only!" It's like looking at a fabulous dessert on the cover of a cooking magazine, wondering whether you could ever summon the patience, ingredients and persistence necessary to create it yourself.

What then, if fiction and food were combined for such an experience? Perhaps it would have the same effect. Stories that have food in them have been known to send readers to the kitchen - or to a restaurant! There is that same element of satisfaction, though, that one gets from a good story that one can derive from a really good dish. Both together the sensations are twice as powerful.

Try it: either read a story that has food as one of its elements or topics, or get yourself to the kitchen, wield a wooden spoon, and create a delicious dish. Or you can write a story that contains food. There are various ways food can be used as a prop in fiction.

I have just resurrected seven food stories and packaged them as The Astronomer's Pig, a neat little volume that won't cost the earth. It will soon come up on Amazon. Don't forget to have a look.

And don't forget to tell me how you relate food with fiction in your mind, and whether you like the combination.

Why are religious thrillers so popular?

Image by Ross_Angus via Flickr

It all started, or so we think, with Dan Brown. He wrote a religious thriller that kept the reading world in thrall for more than just a couple of months. Whether he started something or not is a moot point. Before The Da Vinci Code, there were The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. And a long time before that, books such as The Devil's Advocate by Andrew Neiderman. Even G K Chesterton wrote one: The Man who was Thursday.

These books are appealing to a certain kind of audience, and some of them are controversial enough to stay in the bestseller list for such a long time, that the whole world gets curious. What is it about religious thrillers that makes them so engaging?

First of all, they explore one of the fundamental human urges: the impulse to worship. They also tackle the dichotomy between knowledge and belief. And they add to the perpetual question humans have been asking about existence since the time they started to figure stuff out. Is there a higher power or force? Is it likely an almighty, all-seeing all-knowing God exists? And if there is a God, is it likely to be the intervening kind?

Together with those questions are linked others to do with worship, religion and faith. Stacked upon which, of course, come the history of the various religions, their intersections and debacles, and their testimonies in the way of sacred writings. The wars, crusades, iconoclasts, inquisitions, schisms and other historical events add to the perplexing puzzles that make anything religious extremely interesting, very intriguing, highly debatable and not only a little controversial.

So it is no wonder that writers have taken on - at various times during the history of literature and the telling of stories in writing - some of these religious aspects and used them as background to novels. It is no wonder because humans always marvel, debate and think about these aspects - they will never go away. They continue to perplex and excite people, so writing a thriller with such ingredients is bound to attract readers who have wondered and debated.

To those who are knowledgeable about religious topics, and also to those who know less about religious aspects but love a good thrilling read, this kind of book is a fascinating way to combine entertainment with polemic. It is an engaging way to investigate and explore the deeper questions in a lighter way.

I would love to hear what you think about the popularity of religious thrillers. Leave your opinion now.

Collaboration between writers and how it works

Writing can be a solitary and seemingly thankless task. Feedback is very hard to get, and few will understand the frustrations that face a novice or emerging writer.

Finding someone who understands the processes, attitudes and situations a writer can face on a daily basis is not that hard. Empathy and advice are only a few clicks away. Networks such as LinkedIn and Writers' Digest, not to mention AuthorAdvance and Authors Den, put writers in touch with each other. One can exchange ideas and get support for problems without leaving desk, keyboard and mouse.

When a group of like-minded writers get together, however, based perhaps on a similar genre, regional identity, or simply a liking for each other's style and ethics, the group is more likely to become collaborative in a way that helps with more than personal glitches or style queries.

Collaboration between writers can bring about an exchange of audiences. Readers can discover writers affiliated with each other much more easily, through shared websites, link exchanges, and online networking. Take ANZauthors, a group I belong to. This group of serious working writers operates in the same wide region, but all in widely differing genres and styles. Still, we collaborate in more ways than one. Advice and support is always there when we correspond through our Yahoo group. And we are always visible to the world together on our own website.

Readers coming to the site discover new writers and new kinds of writing to explore. My fans, family and friends find books they would not otherwise have stumbled upon on the enormous Internet. And my own books are discovered by the followers of my colleagues in the group.

It works. Support and advice ... and the exchange or audiences: these are invaluable assets to a writer whose occupation is no longer the lonely struggle it used to be, thanks to online connections.


I would be very happy to hear how you make connections with other writers, and how you find it valuable. If you are a reader: do you find you can stumble upon great reads if you follow writers you know, and their connections?

According to Luke appears on Amazon.com

Two or more years' solid work culminates in a great deal of excitement when a book finally emerges into the real world. There! All the agonizing over characters, all the fiddling with plot and sub-plots. All the research into locations, artefacts, scriptures, names and procedures.  All the fiddly decisions about adverbs and ellipses.

It has come to fruition, and According to Luke has emerged on Amazon.com
In the coming weeks, it will come up at all the other Amazon storefronts, many online bookstores such as the Book Depository,  and the eBook will of course emerge as well. By March 29, the official launch day, it will be everywhere. There will also be a full front page dedication at BeWrite Books, the publishers.

This release sets off a mad media flurry, a number of reviews and interviews, and of course, a physical launch. All will be revealed in due course. I'll be writing about it as it happens.

Read an eBook week? Read an eBook YEAR!

                                                          Image via WikipediaEveryone is reading more eBooks. It's a fact. Statistics keep surfacing about eBook sales. Better believe them. It's 2011, and it's happening now.

 "...people are not only changing their reading habits – they're reading MORE than ever. That's good news." Neil Marr, BeWrite Books. 


BeWrite Books always knew this revolution would come: since forever, they have simultaneously released paperbacks and eBooks for all titles, and the world has gradually caught up with this forward-thinking strategy. What's more, their eBooks are available for all formats, and are DRM free. That means you can switch them from one reader to      another, including your phone, depending on where, what and how you want to read. Handy.


So this week, give it a whirl. Try an eBook, because it's eBook week. Try one of mine. Try one of any author's - it's quite an experience to be able to read at any angle, change your font size, change backgound colour, and look up unusual words without getting up from your favourite armchair ... or deck chair ... or bed.


One of the best things about eBooks is that they're green. No trees are sacrificed. Rather less energy goes into their making than any paper book. True, they are different, but never fear, paper books won't disappear that quickly. The zip did not kill the button, and the ballpoint pen did not kill the pencil. The tin can did not kill the glass jar. We have discovered, as inventive humans, that devices can live side-by-side.


Do it this week. Everyone's doing it (I know, because my eBook sales are going up).


Then answer this question: how do you think eBook reading will affect what, when and how often you read?  

Where authors get their inspiration

Every now and then, I get visually inspired. It does not happen often, but it did just now, and I must tell everyone. I used to think I was only inspired by words. Most of my writing came from a line or two I read somewhere, or something somebody said.

I can write whole chapters from a line I find in a magazine, a poem, or even an advert. I don't use the words themselves, but they are what opens the floodgates for thousands of more words to come into my head. No, not even my head... sometimes I feel they are in my fingers, and just get typed out.

Today, a strange thing happened. I saw a picture by Rembrandt called The Philosopher's Meditation. It is one of those rare pictures of that great master's that are not very well known. Most people can conjure a mental picture of his self-portraits, but this one is a rare one. And it immediately gave me a trigger, a flow of words that would just come if I let them. I'll let them presently, after I finish this.

So please, imagine me writing, writing, writing - and have a look at what set it all off. Those stairs - those spiral wooden risers and treads - are so Dutch. One can imagine the tall narrow house in which they serpent upward and downward. It's a mysterious painting, and no doubt the piece I write will try to convey that sense of mystery. The sense of those times when nightfall brought the necessity of lighting one's way. The failing light coming through the window makes the woman on the right stir the fire and soon, she will be lighting yellow candles that smell of tallow and beeswax.

I must stop right there... this is not the right place to put it all down. Watch this space, and I shall tell you if I got anywhere with this visual prompt.

And do let me know what sets you writing. Are you blessed with visual ability, a nice link between your eyes and your creative brain? Or do you need music? Smells and tastes, we know - not only from Proust - are very powerful triggers. What are yours?

How to learn from other writers

You get to the point, as a writer, where you feel a bit jaded. You feel you have jumped through so many hoops that it's started to irk. You feel you have seen every version of a sentence... and daily writing starts to feel like a sentence. Of a very imprisoning kind.

ANZauthors website

Then you do something on a pure whim, and you are on a learning curve again. It happened this week. I volunteered to set up a website for the members at ANZauthors, a Yahoo discussion group that has been going strong for many years now. From the minute I dusted off my HTML tools, I started to learn. Not about how to make a website - I do it the easy way, and Yola helps with that. No, no - I started to learn from my writer friends. It was a refresher course in a way: a reminder about versatility, determination, novelty and guts.

Guts? Oh yes - one needs guts to be an author, especially today. My colleagues on ANZauthors showed me better than ever before how there are more than a dozen ways to approach the world of publishing. How one can never stop learning. How it's vital to understand what readers want. How one can never let go of empathy, understanding, generosity and purpose. How small egos matter in the world of big ideas and big money. How technology is a tool rather than an enemy. How family features in what a writer thinks and does.

I think I learned more this week than I had in the whole preceding year, and it's bound to get into my writing. It is bound to affect how I think about the human condition. As I slowly put the site together, I read each individual author's biography, blurbs, and helpful articles for writers, and I picked up tips any jaded writer would do well to read.

I learned how sometimes, being an author is something some people do DESPITE what is happening in their lives, to their families, or to their health. I also learned that some books are written BECAUSE of what some writers have experienced in a first-hand way. It is amazing how much fiction can come from a set of very real circumstances.

All the authors at ANZauthors are very busy people, and between them, they have published a number of great books (yes, and a great number of books). Do visit the new site: ANZauthors and witness, as I did, the incredible creativity that comes from applied determination, talent, and inspiration, which amounts to a lot of very hard work.

Let me know what you think below. What ingredients do you think are invaluable to an author?

Publishing with CreateSpace

Publishing is getting easier and easier. Writers everywhere are discovering that the interface between them and their readers is now more direct. It is possible to build a readership without the traditional expedients of agent or publisher.

Even for traditionally published authors, this new directness has a number of benefits and possible uses. Out of print volumes can be resurrected, and short pieces can be published in slim volumes that used to be commercially not feasible.

For these easily-managed books, an author can resort to putting out self-published editions that do surprisingly well for some. Using CreateSpace, which is the self-publishing arm run by Amazon.com, is one option. Having tried it myself for a small volume, I can say that the experience is not unpleasant.

I took a novella, which I had already made available as an eBook, and added four bonus short stories which were compatible in theme, tenor and narrative style. I then spent a lot of time formatting the text and illustrations on MSWord. (I use the 2010 version). Using the page size I chose on CreateSpace, I worked to get each page as close to perfect as I could. I read advice about fonts, margins, using pictures and pagination on various sites I googled. There is a lot of information available, and most of it is useful. I then converted the pages into PDF format using the 'Save As' facility in Word. It worked! Proofing the PDF is essential: I had to do the conversion process three times before I was happy with the result.

Designing the cover was also pleasantly simple. I chose one of the templates at CreateSpace and personalized it using the number of options offered. It took time, because I wanted a cover that would be compatible in colour and character with my other books.

I then let everything rest for a day, for two reasons. One was a raging head cold. The other was the necessity of viewing the manuscript and the cover with a fresh eye. Needless to say, I discovered half a dozen errors I could not have picked with streaming eyes, between sneezes. A pair of tired eyes 'used' to a manuscript will see what they want to see, not what's actually there.

I spent an enormous amount of time reading the benefits and disadvantages of self-publishing with Amazon's CreateSpace. It is not for every author, neither is it for every book. Decisions must be made about pricing, distribution and management of sales - not to mention royalties and taxes - that could be different for each individual book. So what seemed beneficial for me, and the title I was working with at the time, might not apply to my next book, or to another writer with a similar book. Each title must be considered carefully.

That is part of the advice I have that comes from my experience. Authors need to examine the benefits and options available, and apply them to each single and individual title. There are disadvantages tied in with every single choice one makes. Sometimes they are negligible, sometimes considerable. Caution, and reading fine print, are recommended. Just because I chose CreateSpace this time, for this title, does not mean I can do it again without thinking, for another book.

An author needs to ask: What do I want for this book? Who do I think will read it? Is it a book I want to make money from, or is it a potboiler? Does this kind of distribution fit my needs, and access my audience, wherever I think it is? Is tax an issue?

The so-called revolution in publishing is doing a number of things. It is separating the concept we had of 'the book' into at least three streams. Books ain't books any more, just as oils ain't oils. All authors and readers ought to examine what they think they know, and how they think it's all changing, and take each step in the publishing journey as carefully as possible. The mistakes one makes can be written up as experience, because there is a lot to learn.